I for one absolutely recall "classic" GNSS based purely on GPS. The combination of only having GPS, early slow hardware with only cold starts, young software implementations, made for quite a ropey experience.

I think my first proper experience was a PCMCIA GPS card in an HP IPaq running TomTom 2, or possibly some Garmin version. Revolutionary at the time, and brilliant on long journeys, but compared to today it was awful.

I still have an old Garmin for sea kayaking that I sometimes use. With a completely clear view of the sky it can easily take quite a few minutes to get a fix.

This is actually how all gps devices still work, including the latest smartphones and watches. It's just that now, devices can pre-download the almanac over your data connection, mostly eliminating that delay.

Well most offline devices don't take minutes now except for the first fix in a long time. It's generally around 30 seconds to a minute.

Usually the almanac is stored in non-volatile memory so additional startup fixes are much faster.

It's more than that too, old receivers couldn't track and download from as many satellites at once. All modern receivers can pull almanac/ephemeris data from pretty much everything they see at once now.

I've got an eMap - last time I tried it (after it was off for N years), it took upwards of 20 minutes to get a fix with a clear sky because it could only track (AFAIK) 6 satellites and without the hints from recent use, it struggled badly.

But there was another big important to positioning: Incorporating other signals (cell & WiFi). There's a huge difference on the same Android device with and without Google services (which do the aforementioned job).

> Support for Galileo and Glonass was touted maybe a decade ago, but there was never any massive improvement in accuracy. Same story?

Why don't you supply a source to go along with your bold claim? Instead, here is the first set of test results I found on google: https://rxnetworks.com/press-releases/test-confirms-that-gal...

It shows that using more than just GPS substantially improved accuracy in challenging environments. Dual frequency GPS should show strong improvements too.

> Dual frequency GPS should show strong improvements too.

It does. Reviews of Garmin's GPSMap 66sr which was the first one with dual band, are really good. Especially in tough tracking situations.

Time to First Fix is also better.

Yeah. I used various Garmin GPS devices before, GPS (eTrex 30, gpsmap 62s) and GPS+GLONASS+Galileo. But my multi-band gpsmap 66sr gets a fix insanely quick compared to these other devices and the tracks are very accurate/steady. Here is a nice review that compares the gpsmap 66sr, gps 66i, iPhone 12 Pro and Fenix 6x Pro Solar:

https://hikingguy.com/hiking-gear/garmin-gpsmap-66sr-review-...

I've been thinking about getting one of those, I would really want to buy a GPSMap 66sr but I also use InReach a lot. Which the 66i has, but it lacks the dual-band GPS... So neither option is really perfect. And it's a big expense for me so I don't want to buy something that gets superseded a month later (again)

In the end I decided I'd wait until Garmin comes up with a GPSMap which has both dualband and InReach. But it's turning out a long wait.. They did come up with a replacement for the InReach Mini I'm using so its resale value has also dropped in the meantime :(

So for now I'm still using the InReach Mini 1 + my crappy phone GPS.

Luckily I don't need InReach, so it was an easy decision for me. Last year I made the mistake to cheap out and get a 64sx. It's a fine GPS, but it's was not really a big improvement over my 62s. Having GLONASS and Galileo as well was nice, but the 64sx is not multi-band, only has a few extra connectivity options, and still has the same old interface as the 62s.

However, I love the 66sr. Not only is it fast and accurate, the screen is so much nicer than the 62/64 series. The UI has the same base interface, but looks much refreshed compared to the 62/64. And I love the support for Live Geocaching. No need to plan ahead and do pocket queries, but I can just download caches on-device.

I was first a bit hesitant about the built-in lithium battery (no more replaceable AA batteries), but then the 66sr has more than double the battery life of the 66s (36 hours vs. 16 hours), so it's not an issue in practice for my uses.

Would the iPhone 14's built-in Satellite SOS (and satellite location sharing with friends) feature replace your need for an InReach device? It depends on how you use the InReach, I guess.

I don't know.. I don't use iPhones anymore (for software compatibility and price reasons - on a Spanish salary they are simply too expensive) but if Samsung would get a similar feature then perhaps...

It depends how well it works though. And how much fussing around is actually required with that targeting stuff. Of course in an emergency I may not always be able to fuss with it a lot. It depends on real-world usability. I'm sure the various hiking sites will put it to the test when it comes out.

> Support for Galileo and Glonass was touted maybe a decade ago

I bought a new phone in 2021 and it newly touted Galileo support but when actually opening up GPSTest, there were no satellites. On the forums, it turns out nobody could receive any Galileo. This isn't something that has been around for very long as of today, and when it's advertised, it might not even work.

Also, "As of 2012, [Galileo] was scheduled to have 15 satellites operational in 2015 and reach full operation in 2020" (Wikipedia). The first satellite had been launched only a year prior, 2011. This really wasn't a thing yet, a decade ago.

GLONASS is something my previous phone (Huawei, Feb 2017, €240) could reliably receive along with BeiDou, so that has been around a bit longer.

The difference between my GPS-only 2012 phone and the Huawei was night and day. Multiple minutes to find a fix versus mere seconds, both under reasonable conditions next to a window (both lying on the windowsill, started searching for a fix at the same time). Whether that's due to GLONASS and BeiDou or if the GPS chip itself also made a leap, I don't know, but yes this has gotten a lot better and it's definitely noticeable as a regular user, if you use GNSS specifically.

Probably you haven't noticed because phones, by default at least, upload WiFi identifiers around them to Google/Apple which then return a location, so in both cases you get a fairly good position within whatever your ping time to goopple is, and goopple gets a nice map of users' locations in return. (Or to Mozilla, if you modified your phone to use MLS instead. I tried it once, was nice, but a hassle to set up so my current phone doesn't have it anymore.)